Jade Wesker = Major liability.
Credit: Marcos Cruz/Netflix
I really enjoyed Netflix’s Resident Evil series and Jade Wesker (Ella Balinska) is an undeniably great character. But we really need to talk about one thing.
Namely, the fact that she is a full liability.
Don’t get me wrong, she’s ridiculously resourceful. Intelligent. Great in battle. If a herd of zombies were coming at me, I sure wish Jade would crawl in the back.
But if I was just trying to survive, say in a closed community with no direct zombie threats, I wouldn’t want her anywhere near me.
Yes, you already know what we should be talking about: the university ship.
In Episode 6 of Resident Evil, Jade – after being chased by a giant slug, kidnapped, kidnapped again, attacked by hideous underground creatures, imprisoned, and kidnapped for the third time – is finally reunited with her family aboard a ship full of friendly , wandering academics and researchers.
The perfect time to relax and catch up with the family, right?
After a token chat with her husband Arjun (Ahad Raza Mir) and daughter Bea (Ella Zieglmeier), Wesker immediately goes back to the real thing of dismembering zombie heads, dissecting a stomach-churning growth on the neck of a queen zombie to try to figure out how it ran the herd.
Is it important work? Absolute. But does it really justify what she does next? No no no.
“We talked about this,” her husband says earlier in the episode, after Wesker told him she got the zombie head from running back to a prison full of undead. “No more unnecessary risks.”
Wesker takes the advice “no more unnecessary risks” firmly on board and then goes out on her own at night, fishes a real zombie from the sea, drags him back onto the ship in a big bag and strings him into the lab for testing purposes using what can only be described as dangerously thin restraints.
Needless to say it only gets worse from there.
First, Jade’s daughter brings her a cup of coffee and sees the hanged monster. Rather than lead her out of the room, Wesker tells her she has “all this under control” and has her wait by the door before casually continuing the experiment.
Sure, she’s an accomplished researcher and a responsible adult, so she probably has it all under control, right?
No! Of course not! Within minutes, the zombie has broken free of its useless restraints and chases Wesker’s daughter through the ship’s corridors like something out of a nightmare, forcing her to flee into a room full of investigators before brutally attacking Wesker’s close friend and pregnant research partner. afflicts to death.
It really is a horrific sequence that is kind of forgotten in the chaos of Umbrella arriving moments later, but it makes me believe that even though Jade is the hero of the story, her evil twin sister actually has a pretty good point when she complains Jade because he is selfish.
“You keep telling yourself you’re trying to save lives,” says Billie (Adeline Rudolph), in one of the show’s closing scenes. “But your hands, Jade? They’re covered in blood. Because you’re selfish. Because you only care about the mission, about restoring what you started. So people die and you keep going. You don’t stop, because there it goes to: you.”
Looking at the evidence, it’s hard not to think she might have a point.
Resident Evil (opens in a new tab) is now streaming on Netflix (opens in a new tab).
